Senior Jira Administrator

Jira Administrator at Canonical
- Remote EMEA — Remote

Canonical is one of the most nomad-friendly employers in tech , having operated as a fully distributed company since 2004. This Jira Administrator role is open to anyone in EMEA time zones (UTC-1 to UTC+4 roughly), which covers a huge swath of popular digital nomad destinations — Lisbon, Tbilisi, Cape Town, Dubai, and many more.

Async vs. sync balance: While the role requires EMEA timezone availability, Canonical's culture is deeply remote-first. Expect predominantly async collaboration via documentation and written communication, with structured in-person sprints twice a year — a perfect fit for nomads who want social connection without being office-bound.

• Lisbon, Portugal: Monthly cost of living ~$1,800–$2,400. Portugal's Digital Nomad Visa (D8) is an excellent fit — requires proof of remote income, and Canonical's global contracts typically qualify.
• Tbilisi, Georgia: Monthly costs ~$1,000–$1,500. Georgia offers a "Remotely from Georgia" program allowing 1-year stays. Very EMEA-timezone compatible (UTC+4).
• Medellín, Colombia: At UTC-5, this falls outside EMEA timezone requirements — a constraint to be aware of.

Perks particularly relevant for travelers: Priority Pass for airport lounges, travel upgrades on long-haul company flights , and a $2,000 annual L&D budget that could fund certifications while on the road. The twice-yearly team sprints in "interesting locations" are a genuine perk for location-independent professionals.

Canonical is a leading provider of open-source software and operating systems for global enterprise and technology markets. Our platform, Ubuntu, is very widely used in breakthrough enterprise initiatives such as public cloud, data science, AI, engineering innovation and IoT. Our customers include the world's leading public cloud and silicon providers, and industry leaders in many sectors. The company is a pioneer of global distributed collaboration, with 1200+ colleagues in more than 80 countries and very few office-based roles. Teams meet two to four times yearly in person, in interesting locations around the world, to align on strategy and execution.

The company is founder led, profitable and growing.

We are hiring a Jira Administrator to manage the Atlassian Jira Cloud at Canonical, including the administration, configuration, automation, and integration responsibilities. We expect the highest engineering quality, rigorous documentation practices, and effective stakeholder management abilities. Our goal is to enable Canonical engineering and business teams to leverage the power of Atlassian Jira, work on challenging assignments, and enable teams to make data-driven decisions.

The role is in the Commercial Systems team that integrates business systems used at Canonical to ensure reliable data flows at the right time to the right place, and to automate business processes across the company. We own a wide range of systems including popular SaaS solutions, such as Jira, Salesforce, NetSuite, Greenhouse, GSuite, and a few dozen others. To achieve this goal, we leverage Python and Go in combination with open source tools, such as Airbyte and Temporal. Our work helps to make data-driven decisions, and increases the efficiency of business operations.

Location:
This role can be held anywhere in EMEA time zones.

Canonical is a leading provider of open-source software and operating systems for global enterprise and technology markets. Our platform, Ubuntu, is very widely used in breakthrough enterprise initiatives such as public cloud, data science, AI, engineering innovation and IoT. Our customers include the world's leading public cloud and silicon providers, and industry leaders in many sectors. The company is a pioneer of global distributed collaboration, with 1200+ colleagues in more than 80 countries and very few office-based roles. Teams meet two to four times yearly in person, in interesting locations around the world, to align on strategy and execution.

The company is founder led, profitable and growing.

We are hiring a Jira Administrator to manage the Atlassian Jira Cloud at Canonical, including the administration, configuration, automation, and integration responsibilities. We expect the highest engineering quality, rigorous documentation practices, and effective stakeholder management abilities. Our goal is to enable Canonical engineering and business teams to leverage the power of Atlassian Jira, work on challenging assignments, and enable teams to make data-driven decisions.

The role is in the Commercial Systems team that integrates business systems used at Canonical to ensure reliable data flows at the right time to the right place, and to automate busines